


Let Our Scars Fall in Love

by GStK, PlumTea



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Gen, M/M, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/pseuds/PlumTea
Summary: The Rebellion failed. Belial died, Lucilius lived. There is no turning back.





	Let Our Scars Fall in Love

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was inspired by fanart of Lucilius holding Belial's head. Unfortunately, it since been deleted by the original artist.
> 
> Trigger warnings for hallucinations and psychosis.

start the play, raise the curtain.

a strange prodigy child, reading in the archives. tinkering with the tetraelements, forming crystalline cores to hold souls. approval from the council, even so young, as the lower classes whispered rumors of an upcoming war. bad dreams, always haunting, telling him things that books never spoke of and nobody ever knew. making perfection—

that’s strange, why is he thinking of this right now? it’s said that the phenomenon of life flashing before one’s eyes has to do with the brain desperately reviewing its memories in a search for some information that would help in the present. 

the present. lucilius, white robes splattered red. lucifer, bloody blade in hand, eyes wide in surprise. belial, unbreathing, dead.

think, think. lucifer is fast, could sever his spinal column with a single stroke of his blade. any advantage he’d have in being an astral is negated thanks to belial. belial has exsanguinated within seconds. his perfect creation knows how to kill perfectly as well. belial’s body is heavy, collapsed on top of lucilius like this. 

lucifer’s mouth twitches, and his grip tightens on the hilt of his sword. he angles it back, force for the second strike. lucifer will not miss. lucilius is going to die.

death isn’t foreign to him. several of his imagined scenarios involved him being cut down. but those were hypotheses. this is now. belial is dead. there is nobody left to orchestrate his grand finale if he falls. so he cannot fall. he cannot die. under no circumstances can he die. 

he heaves his spear up and blasts a burst of energy in lucifer’s direction. lucifer snaps to the defensive, wings protecting him. the blast tears through belial’s corpse and lucilius pushes the bulk off and snatches up what remains. his second blast topples one of the pillars, sending it crashing to the ground with a flurry of stone and dust. 

there’s no freedom for dignity. he runs.

the sounds of war echoes around him, but he doesn’t dare look behind him. only forward, forward, forward, stumbling only when his robes snag on some debris and he has to cut them away. he has to get off this island, maybe back to the stars, somewhere, anywhere. 

he has always been alone. but now he is truly alone. 

* * *

when the creator made the astrals and the stars, he was in folly. he is not a city and lucilius is not a dweller; give him a chance, however, and the creator will pretend he’s a shelter.

lucilius curses the sun that beats down on him. he curses the curtains that open up and shower rain upon him, turning white transparent, revealing the blackness of his soul and his garb underneath. he curses with words only astrals would know, and then some spanning beyond their limited thought processes. the very world tries to pretend it welcomes him. the illusion trickles down into his consciousness until the nightmares come and rattle the dew from his leaves.

the nightmares. the words. the crystals of reality falling all around him and the _ lack_. for all his plans he is missing something. his reflection smiles, and he's not sure if it's in pity or teasing. he smashes the mirror either way. he wakes up, once, to belial's core squeezed impossibly tight in his hand, thought and not muscle compelling cracks to appear along the surface.

he lets go with a strangled sound. core is replaced by spear, helping him to lift himself off the dirty ground. whatever remained at his play to perfection is gone; the sun shines bright and he is covered in darks and impurities.

"shall i kill you?" he's asking the head, even though he's a plan yet to be realised. the slightest error in calculation and this is the result. errors that stack up and cascade, though not without a rope swinging forth, tantalising threads that promise him things can be as they should.

lucifer flanking him at the sight of the world's demise: an impossible dream that no longer haunts him.

belial carrying on his work as he should have, the chaos and the spare the token of distraction— slim. possible, but the possibility complicates with new variables every day.

belial being the one to accompany him, and the two of them whole to see unity and chaos collide into nothing.

he ponders the head. it ponders him back. the sun glares down on them piteously.

"pointless," he murmurs, restoring the head to its dark floating cradle just so he doesn't have to look at it.

oh, how belial will pay.

* * *

he’s traded his white robes for traveler’s garb. dirt and dust and grime and blood turned the white silks and gold thread into a nightmare. glory is past him now. it’s still far too early to try to stay in a residential area, so he’s hidden in a cove by the dip of an island. how utterly humiliating, an astral made to cower in the dark like this. contaminants everywhere, damp and cramped and horrid. the sterility of the lab is as far away as it will ever be. 

a few problems:

  1. he can’t return to estalucia. by now, news of the rebellion has reached them, and they would hold lucilius responsible. the council has the primal beast blueprints ready for mass production, all they need is a scapegoat. they’ll imprison him, or maybe chain him to a desk and force him to invent war machines for them forever. 
  2. astrals rarely venture into the sky realm. the skydwellers are impure blasphemers who dared hurt their divine god, and being around them is like willingly sitting in mud. contact is rare with the skydwellers, so he’d be recognized as a foreign being.

how troublesome, but it’s not completely a lost cause. he could fake partial blindness, which would explain his eyes to any curious skydwellers. more misdirection; he could modify his appearance. with some crushed herbs and flowers, he can make dyes for makeup to change the shape of his eyes. grind some charcoal to give himself skin imperfections. traveling every few years would put off any suspicion of his eternally youthful appearance. 

if he dies, this rotting world will persists for even longer. a festering limb must be amputated before the infection spreads. hope still breathes, as long as he does. 

then there’s this thing. 

lucilius has no idea why he took belial’s head and core with him, but he has. what nonsense, an utter liability. how is he supposed to conceal himself while carrying around something as cumbersome as this? he should throw them away and be done with it already. 

palming the core, he stomps to the opening of the cove. at the precipice, he pulls his arm back, ready to hurl it as far away as possible.

clouds weave across the rocks below. blue will hurtle down to red, to the unknown. to nothing, perhaps. then he will be alone. 

with a sigh, he retreats back into the cove. no time for sentimentality. there’s work to be done.

* * *

let it be so: that the skies could be shorn down, that the world should collapse into a tiny void. words are priceless, the creator is viceless, and he is rending every theory and bringing fiction to life. the sky turns blue and then red when he blinks his eyes. men like him were not meant to be out in the world but put in a box like a cat, yet he tore with his claws and destroyed that equation.

he is not the cog in god's machine.

he does not hunt for safety but for tools. life is at his fingertips; death is at his door. fools as they are they cannot even begin to track his plans, knowing but a whisper on the wind of what is all to come.

the cost is nothing but what he can imagine. imagine shooting holes through the clouds and granting god trypophobia. imagine stars crashing down like a newborn bird shedding molting feathers. survival is not hard and it is not hard when you are an astral, but there's no hand to pull him to bed, no layman's jokes to cut through the haze of his blighted thoughts.

no food. no rest. blood easily shed at the tip of his spear for the sparse messengers and assassins that make their way to him. no want, no need, but a burning rapture to restore what has been taken from him and to give back life to the idiot who thought it was a good idea to save his in the first place.

"you are a fool," he tells belial, another in a countless menagerie of times. the eyes are unblinking. he will not shut them. "lucifer's perfection was the tool to undo us all. and you thought to get in the way. absolutely useless." but there is no body to kick and he is here, alone, under a tree defying himself of warmth. belial is cold. lucilius shuts his eyes.

and lucifer… for a moment, forget him. if lucifer is the stars, then lucilius is the answer. and his answer is one to unpack the atoms, turn quarks and strings with charm and pronouncement. let two be one and let the waves ring out to bend every spine and celestial body.

may the world die its cursed death. someone decided this doomed dream was a valid timeline and it was not him. it could never be him.

it will always be— and he takes one spiteful breath and he clutches that head— it will always be _ him_.

* * *

in time, lucilius floats around skydweller society, never merging, but staying long enough to be a familiar stranger in some towns. he is still a wanderer, but he’d rather take the primitive society of the skies over hunting for food in the wild. the first thing he does when he enters a new town, a new island, is pick up a newspaper. he may be eternal and ageless, but he won’t allow himself to be ignorant.

the sky has triumphed over the stars, he reads in the headlines one day. the astrals have retreated, the skydwellers have won the war. peace returns to the skies once again.

how pitiful. the astrals had his primals to mass produce, infinite other weapons that could shred whole islands, and despite that— they lost. the astrals have forgotten in their endless drive to purify themselves that tenacity and determination are assets and not worldly pleasures. can’t even win a simple war. he’s ashamed of his own species.

skydwellers are worthless, diminutive creatures, he thinks. he miscalculated. the townspeople don’t know what astrals look like, but the soldiers fresh from the battlefield do. one of them looks at him a little too long, sees that his pupils are white and not black, and the rest of them grab their swords.

it would be easy to call down meteors from the heavens and have them pummel this entire island into pieces, but lucifer would pick up on the disturbance instantly. it wouldn’t even be half an hour before assassins come to collect his head.

they tear into him, blades and magic and bullets. one blow cuts a gash down his leg, and he has to limp to safety. he clutches the small cradle holding belial’s head and core close to him, and runs until his feet bleed. 

in a century he’ll return, when the soldiers have aged and the astrals have become nothing more than an evil from old stories.

* * *

this time, he’s bought a house. he fakes being a retired academic, which explains the notes and the strange experiments. he still charts his plans, writing in languages long forgotten, and if someone finds them, the words are nothing but scribbles. the villagers find him strange and they call him an eccentric. he pretends his vision is deteriorating, and employs one of the village boys to help tidy things up. most of the inquiries stop then. the strange feathered cocoon on the workbench is an old heirloom, and it’s strange but many things in this world are strange.

one night, the candles on his workbench burn brighter than usual, and when he goes to snuff them out, they flare up into an inferno.

all previous assassins have failed, so this time they sent the storm. michael materializes before him, and she is just as regal and terrible as he designed her to be. her fury burns the air around them and turns his throat to ash. “you’ve run for long enough,” she declares, an executioner at the ready.

against the primarch of fire, anything that combusts would only add to her strength. he can’t use his elemental runes or any of his spells. when he twists towards the front door, a column of fire blocks the way. flames have caught the wood of the house, and smoke starts to fill the air. he can no longer speak or breathe, and his eyes water as his vision blurs.

he’s no warrior. a researcher doesn’t step into battle, and he is no exception. basic training from early days yes, but that means nothing before someone who has slaughtered her enemies since her birth. still, she hasn’t evolved, and he knows what she’s capable of. the sword she thrusts towards his chest, he’d measured its length when he had it forged. the fire she sends his way, piercing the air like countless bullets, he’s estimated just how many she can throw at once when he was first balancing her core. his strikes back are weak after having absorbed the first hit, but all he needs is to not get injured again. he is a researcher, he observes. flames, blade, staff, wings, defense, breathing, impulses, personality; insert them into an equation and he can predict her every move. it’s no hypothesis if he already knows the answer.

another factor is his endurance. the fire rages, fueling her, and he can’t breathe. her flames are charring his skin faster than he can regenerate it. clutching his spear in one hand and the cradle in the other, he hurries out of his study, into one of the other rooms. the door to one is aflame, so he tries the next one. he hears her thundering after him, burning the door down, then—

he’d planned for an ambush. he didn’t know which room he’d end up escaping into, so he rigged all of them. astrals specialize in creation, and he has always been a cut above the rest. the invisible threads he strung around the house react to any hostility, and when enough are tangled up, they create a burst of elemental energy. michael can endure earth and wind, but she falters under water. that second is all that he needs. 

fire is just one element of the sky, and he is from the stars. spear in hand, he directs his energy into one point, twisting the space around her. the world reacts instantly to the sudden rupture, rushing to correct it. sound and light drown inside it, a mad tornado sweeps around the distortion, fissures and silence fold over each other. a flame stands no chance against the void. 

disaster has turned the space around the house inside out. above, the thick clouds have been shredded up, and the ground below has been blown away down to the deepest stone. lucilius limps away from it all, sooty and bleeding but still alive.

michael is not dead either; escaped into the embers, readying her sword for another day. that day will never come. she won’t find him again.

the villagers have come to help, but there’s no helping this. they’ve arrived with water to put out the blaze, but they won’t find any fire in the rubble, and will later remember the incident as an accident that struck an unlucky eccentric.

his former colleagues called his preparedness paranoia. only belial called it clever. he checks the cradle, and some of the dark wings have been singed but it’s unharmed. 

all that time and money wasted. he committed all his notes to memory, but all the physical copies burnt up in the blaze. his clothes too; just when he had a small but decent collection so he wouldn’t have to wear rags, he loses them all in an instant. there’s what he has on, but they’ve been so badly charred that they can hardly be called clothing anymore. 

if belial was here, he’d burst out laughing and make a lewd comment or two. lucilius can almost hear chuckles from within the cradle. 

“laugh all you want,” he grumbles, and goes to start all over again.

* * *

hers is a lock-step that brings them ever closer to the edge.

the water is of the shrewd and it comes as a shroud. he has struck for isolation in this era, a new trial— a new error. she has planned for him, she has waited for him, and she is no michael, ready to overthrow his existence with the slightest hint let slip. it is on a day that he departs his lakeborne home for his research, and when he is returned, he finds the maiden.

water from the lake is turning aerial forces tidal around his home, reverse waterfalls that slow as ice and break free, flow to crack, river to break. she balances a smile across the razor edge of her wings and her ribbons, the cherubs departing her with a playful laugh.

belial. belial. she’s cradling belial to her chest like a mother to a babe. the name of his creation registers after the fact— _ gabriel _— not for how long they have been apart, but for the unsettling ring of alarm that rolls through his very bones.

he knew they would come but she’s subsumed his traps, meant for the predicted arrival of uriel. she has skirted her way around his further tricks with grace. the primal of water, balance, blessing, disaster.

“now this, i hadn’t expected to find,” she says with a ruthless gentility. “a cradle? for a fallen angel? i think we all knew you fawned over the supreme primarch, but _ this_…”

she would happily crush the cocoon within her hands. her words are a melody, and he disregards each one. his pulse ricochets _ belial_, belial, _ belial_. foolish emotion. when had he ever become tied up in sentimentality?

“so many years and you’ve forgotten how to speak to your master. hmph.”

“i believe you mean ‘traitor,’” she giggles. “i love playing pretend, but now’s not the time. turn yourself in and let the supreme primarch judge your fate. he might even spare belial.”

“do not speak as if you have not come to kill me.”

“the stream doesn’t always flow one direction.” she tries to act like a sage but he sees through it. he’s seeing through it. he’s seeing red. “you didn’t teach michael to believe in mercy. but i do. we can weigh the scales of your misdeeds,” she holds belial’s cocoon in one hand, tilting it downward, "and everything you’ve come to offer this world,” and she tilts her other hand up. belial’s cradle begins to tip.

the spear is flying at gabriel in the blink of an eye. she offers him a graceful dodge, and retribution: dropping an entire lake of water onto his house.

they begin their clash in the sad misery of another estate.

water grabs at him in tendrils and ways water never should. it dashes over with ice, breaking like the glass of his windows. the icicles she slings at him barrel around the event horizons of the voids he creates, their hyperbolic orbit sending them straight back. but shallow ice does not crack ice. his invasion must go deeper, beneath the surface.

white and red; his vision of the world crackles while she laughs and juggles belial’s cradle on ethereal jets. his runes catch her at her wrists, weigh her down, slamming her into the splinters of his former home. belial’s cocoon arcs hopefully through the air. when he reaches his hand for it, six brilliant wings emerge from collapsed wood, and hope is swooped from him by the manic laughter of a dancing cherub that spirits belial away.

“you’ll have to do better than that,” she says, not taunting— chiding, more like. like a mother. she settles serenely back into the air, her ribbons gathered in bunches around her shoulders. she knows she has the upper hand. he knows she has the upper hand. the cradle is returned to her grasp by her mindless slave, and she brings it to her breast again in some ridiculous play at coddling. “did you ever think this time would finally come? that you would be bested by your own creations?”

the time _ had _ come. the moment had been ripe; he still remembers the flash of lucifer’s sword, aimed straight for his neck. there’s a sickly sort of disappointment that settles in the back of his throat that makes him nauseous. it’s an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation. when he drives the sauroter of his spear into the ground, she sends him a pitying gaze. tendrils of water begin to snake and dance around him, some far-flung attempt at an embrace.

“it doesn’t have to be like this,” she says again, and there it is. emotion. sentience was the accident of their experiments; emotion was the wanton consequence. but he feels nothing to see it all play out across gabriel’s face, this… desire, foreign in every way. “it won’t be beautiful, and it won’t be the way it used to be. but we can—”

and then she’s cut short by her own ungodly screams. with the second blow of his spear to the ground, belial’s cocoon finally responds, and all of its black feathers travel outward in an explosion of spikes. blue and violet flames travel down the tips, and she begins to steam. gabriel throws what remains of the cradle away from her, thrashing while her cherubs cry out in fright.

sentience was an accident; emotion, a consequence; but pain? fear? all creatures know of it. there’s a wrenching in his gut when he sees belial’s core flung off in the direction of the trees, but he squelches it— literally, when he grabs at the icy spear that has pierced his arm and his stomach. it won’t budge; he amputates his own forearm to get free. he’s calculating the trajectory and the probabilities of where belial’s core has landed while he limps over to gabriel.

she’s evaporating, still, her leotard blown through, her core briefly visible through between her exposed breasts. the fog tries to cover her while her regeneration blinks and stutters. she looks at him with abject horror when he steps on her stomach, raises his spear high.

the cherubs yell and she disappears in a cloud of water vapor before he can deal the killing blow. it was never his intention to kill her, but the fear. yes, the fear. that had been—

_ nice, hadn’t it_? belial whispers from beyond the brush. lucilius turns his direction, clutching vaguely at the exposed ulna of his regrowing arm. _ getting them all worked up. mickey was always my favourite, though. the way she’d go all red— _

“shut up,” lucilius says. he hears the own exhaustion in his voice while he scrounges through wet dirt and leaves one-handed. his spear lays discarded to the side. his hiding place is exposed, destroyed. the escape is tireless and they are shortening the years with which they catch up to him.

none of it matters, though, when he has belial in hand. the purple orb is warm when he curls five fingers around it… then, moments later, ten.

he holds belial to himself in the way gabriel had, that infantile way, while feathers slowly enshroud the core to protect it once again. “shut up,” he repeats, even when belial hasn’t said anything.

* * *

an anomaly must be approached with caution, especially for a man on the run. when a black void opens in lucilius’ rented room, he loses a few seconds to analysis. it doesn’t spring out of anything but materializes, like a corridor made solid, untethered by anything.

once his mind can’t identify what it is, next comes the danger response, and the intruder finds himself surrounded on all sides by runes ready to bring a planet’s worth of gravity down on them both.

the intruder is familiar, yet different. still, lucilius recognizes that broad stature and golden hair. that isn’t enough for him to withdraw, not even with a shadowy spike at his neck. 

“quite the warm welcome.”

“spare me. it’s late, and i’m exhausted. tell me how you got in here and i won’t flatten you.”

“how much time do you think you have before i cut out your throat?”

“enough.”

an impasse. that jet-black murk is both solid and gaseous, hard enough to stab but dissipates in the air. it’s unlike any substance lucilius has ever heard of. the unknown is dangerous. but to beelzebub, lucilius has never let his true capabilities be known either. they both glare at each other, two outcasts from a society that’s long since fallen.

lucilius puts his spear down first, deactivating his runes. beelzebub does the same in kind, letting that murk sublimate into nothingness.

“so. you survived.”

he did. not the way he intended to, but he did. “you did too.”

“i did.” beelzebub sits by one of the side tables. he still has his astral cloak, even if it drags much more shadow behind it now. “you don’t have anything to drink in this place?”

“i have a few tea leaves.”

“how are they?”

“terrible.”

beelzebub snorts. taps his claws on the table. “it’ll do.”

* * *

lucilius is a quick learner. the next time he dreams of his clone with long hair, he has a blade to his own throat.

his clone huffs, as if he’s dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. “there’s no need for that.”

“go. let me sleep in peace without your presentations.”

his clone sighs, folding up the scroll he had prepared. last they met, it was an endless onslaught of whispers, words of love for a god that never loved anyone, pleas to better his ways, hums of the beauty of the world. all worthless. he will never convert to a religion he left behind. “i’m only trying to help you.”

lucilius doesn’t know exactly what the man that’s stolen his face is, but he knows that he’s a servant of the omnipotent, and so he is lucilius’ enemy. “then help me by leaving me be.”

“it would be much better to give up. wouldn’t you be much happier if you enjoyed what this world has to offer you?”

“your trivialities bore me.”

“but you’re all alone now,” he says, voice deep with something. pity. sympathy. 

lucilius doesn’t answer for a moment. when he does, he’s the abyss as he promises, “i’ll destroy you too,” before cutting his throat.

he wakes up gasping, sweat sticking his clothes to his body. he shivers, not right in his own skin and so impossibly small. his dreams have never been this vivid, visions not conversations. familiar and horrible, a reminder that he is forever imperfect—

the dark cradle bumps his side with its sharp halo, making him flinch. he tries knocking it away, but the feathers encase his hand. warm. inhale. exhale. in. out. lucilius finds himself again and shakes his hand free. 

all alone, his clone had said. he was not alone once. he had lucifer, his true friend and trusted equal, and belial, his accomplice. to lucifer, he had shared his theories and got a blade to his throat at the end of it all. to belial, he had whispered his plans, and got a corpse. failures, he intrinsically thinks before taking it back.

what would he have done if he had to keep his mouth shut? lucifer he knows was too pure to agree with his plans, even if deep down he’d _ hoped _. and belial— what if belial didn’t agree to be his accomplice? what if belial had listened to his plans and instead of smiling, called him a heretic? a monster? what would he have done then?

lucilius shakes his head. now is not the time for naps or terrible dreams. 

he doesn’t trust beelzebub, but he knows that the other astral had access to the high council and their battle plans. the council, and their ever-aging ideals, were never ones for new prospects. they preferred absolute victory with caution, and that meant mapping all the war sites and making sure that the astrals could still tap into their energies in impure territory. one of the sites that beelzebub had pointed out to him was once a temple to the gods, ruins now. 

wind-worn stones and toppled columns spoke of a place once great, now fallen and forgotten. not even the locals are interested in it, letting it rot worthless and forgotten. a fitting end for a divine temple. the omnipotent has forsaken it, as he has everything else. see what false hope in a false faith gets you?

he touches one of the stones and feels a pulse, faint but still running. this place still has energy, still faintly breathing. with some adjustments, it can be his new workshop, and he feels a small spark at tainting a holy place of the divine—

a spear of earth bursts from the ground, crushing a spire less than a step ahead of him. the ground sifts and turns, sweeping up the old structures and crooked formations into a spiraling sinkhole. a gust picks up, light enough to rustle his hair, then strong enough to bend trees, wearing down the collapse a thousand years in a few seconds. dust to dust, robbing the soil of nutrients and structure and weathering the spot until it crumbles off the island. 

lucilius stares. he inhales deeply, holds his breath for a few moments. there’s no sense in letting his emotions get him heated. only foolish, less practiced people allow annoyance to sway them.

fury darts across his brain, and his breath comes out ragged. he drags his spear to his side to face the two materializing primarchs above him. 

he has had _ enough_.

* * *

once again, lucilius has an accomplice. it’s a temporary thing; lucilius knows that beelzebub has plans of his own, plans that lucilius still breathing would only get in the way of. and yet, he needs useful pawns. it’s been far too long by himself, chasing after a dream. 

beelzebub is egotistical, and that’s tolerable. beelzebub tells him it’s repulsive to carry around pieces of his pet’s corpse, and lucilius ignores him. primals have always been nothing more than useful vermin to most astrals, so this is no surprise. still, eccentrics don’t bother eccentrics, and they work together towards the end— as long as they remain useful to each other.

that black murk, void matter, the missing link in many equations, the only substance that can perfectly kill undying beings, is now beelzebub’s to control. the price and gift for falling into the realm beyond the omnipotent’s gaze. lucilius can’t help but feel a bit jealous, that beelzebub has managed to blaspheme before he has, but the void matter is useful. he keeps silent.

on a remote island, they review the details once again over a game of chess. beelzebub remembers their plan (one of many, but the only one lucilius shared). falling into the beyond hasn’t taken his reason from him. or his chess skills. 

it all goes well until beelzebub says, “i hope you know that we have to kill lucifer.”

“_ no.” _lucilius snarls, never more sure of anything before. lucifer is his ultimate creation, the apex, perfection. he is everything lucilius has worked for and he will not be destroyed.

“lucilius,” beelzebub says, dry and impatient. “he needs to die.”

the ground below them bubbles with lucilius’ rage. rocks blister and warp as they burst from the inside out. creation is a powerful miracle, but too much and it becomes a cancer. “you will not put even as much of a finger on him. kill the rest if you want, they’re disposable pieces. lucifer remains unharmed.”

beelzebub sighs, tapping his cheek with his finger. he glances at the rocks rapidly dividing and melting, a fragment of lucilius’ power he’s never witnessed before, but he is unafraid. “and how will we gain access to avatar? lucifer has bound his life to seal it up, same with pandemonium. two crucial parts of your plan are inaccessible as long as he lives.”

“then we find another way.”

“you are being a brat.”

“silence,” lucilius’ words are blades. “astral society has fallen. don’t think you can posture in front of me anymore.”

“i don’t need my title to tell you the truth. get over yourself. you know it has to be done.” he leaves lucilius looking at the board. it isn’t checkmate just yet, but lucilius doesn’t have many options.

under a withered tree, lucilius sits with belial’s head next to him. beelzebub thinks he’s gone mad, talking to a severed head. he’s never been further from the truth. “if our positions were reversed, what would you have done?”

belial, still dead, replies, “i’d do anything for you. even if it meant tearing through lucifer.”

yes, he would have. lucilius knows he would have. he remembers how belial kept his mask on perfectly, but even that ultimate mask slipped when lucilius revealed that not all of his plans meant he’d survive to see the end of it all. “i know.”

lucifer is perfection. lucifer is what he worked tirelessly to create, from the shards of his core to the tendons in his wings. he is lucilius’ equal, the only person in the world lucilius dared to share his mind with. lucifer is his only friend. the astrals always spoke of purity and cleanliness and how betraying that was a sin, but they were fools. killing lucifer, that’s a sin. lucifer is eternal, meant to live proudly until the end of his days, even if that meant he’d be lucilius’ enemy.

the dead man teases, “but if he lives, the world lives too.”

lucilius closes his eyes. “i know.”

“he dies with dignity,” he tells beelzebub the next day. there is no room for argument. “i’ll be with you to make sure that he does.”

* * *

here is a moment captured in time crystals. here is the moment where it all begins to end.

lucifer, clutching his side, a trail of blood painting his way away from sandalphon’s cradle and towards the centre of canaan. where he stumbles, lucilius follows. the bright halls that they once knew well are ruined, dirtied with memories. the faint glow of light through shattered ceilings illuminates the dust and rubble in the air. their very own post-apocalypse.

beelzebub had dealt the first blow, divested lucifer of his six mighty wings. he had said nothing when lucilius reached a hand out to take the orange blade from him. he had chosen to disappear, uninterested in watching the gory details. that’s how he always was: only interested in getting the job done.

“my friend,” lucifer pants through gritted teeth, clutching his bleeding side. “i have something to ask of you.”

_ kill him_.

the voices are not mere murmurs any more, but hellish screams coming from the pits of the crimson horizon. he’s clutching the chaos blade tight in his hand, though his face reveals nothing of the struggle going on within. lucifer, though— he can’t tell. no matter how much lucilius had spoken to him, invested in him, plotted the course of his own emotions…

lucifer had never understood. “but i did,” belial says. his cocoon is a weight carried at lucilius’ side. one look at the feathered shell lucifer had coveted, and lucilius had known instantly. they both have their vices, and here, at the end, they struggle to protect them. “i always knew it was going to be you. war’s a bitch, ain’t it, cil?”

“my friend,” lucifer calls again. “kill me if you must. but keep sandalphon safe.”

“the spare. my plans for him to inherit your power have long since been made forfeit, lucifer,” lucilius replies. it’s hard to hear his own voice over the chaotic yells his neurons create. “give me any logical reason why i should not dispose of him after i am done with you.”

“there is none.” they both know this. lucilius thins his lips, regardless. “i know you have no reason to allow sandalphon to live. but i am asking you as your friend for this one last favour.”

“...”

“...lucilius. please.”

he shifts from one foot to the other. lucifer has not called his name, not ever since he taught him the title he wished to be known by. a friend to perfection; could there be any greater reward, as a creator, as a father?

“you will survive for some time in whatever state i leave you in,” lucilius remarks, touching the feathers of belial’s cocoon. lucifer looks at it, but his eyes are starting to grow glassy. “no one will come for you. no one will come for him.”

lucifer shuts his eyes, and lucilius breathes in the air of a pause, of information that is beyond his understanding. it makes him narrow his eyes. he does not like it. “do what you must to me. but do not harm him. i only wished to bring him solace, as he had given to me,” the supreme primarch repeats, firm.

oh, how it must feel to be desired by perfection. oh, creator, to be satisfied with yourself, your body, your choices, the circumstances dealt to you by fate. lucifer’s hanging by strings and he’s thinking of sandalphon. all of the eons they spent together, none of them are flashing before his eyes.

“hmph. are you prepared?” lucilius asks, raising the sword above his head. lucifer meets his gaze for the last time.

“what comes after death, my friend?”

another thing lucilius does not know. his grip on the sword is starting to waver, so he squeezes his hand tight. “for us, lucifer? nothing.”

that last breath draining from lucifer’s form as he exhales, his muscles starting to go limp— what beauty. “then i am as prepared as you created me to be. i only hope i might see sandalphon ther—”

a clean slice and the head goes rolling. lucifer is robbed of his ears, his eyes, his mouth. there is only a moment’s silence before he begins to call out for sandalphon’s name, on channels only astrals and primals can hear.

beelzebub is leaning outside the newly-christened mausoleum when lucilius hauls the body out. “you certainly took your time.”

“...”

“feeling sentimental, lucilius?”

“don’t be a clod,” lucilius snaps, hating the momentary waver in his voice, hating the grin on beelzebub’s face. “help me move this. the primarchs will be here anon.”

he dumps the body off his shoulders and it vanishes into a dark portal. “what fool am i to think you would abandon your greatest creation, indeed. it seems you’ve found a new game to play.”

“the game of hope,” belial sings. “too bad it never works out for guys like us.”

lucilius spirits himself away. he will not listen to fools, or baying hounds in his mind that beg him to stay.

* * *

an artist can do with his creations as he pleases. and as he pleases, lucilius creates.

there is no room in his coming world for sentimentality, love. but there’s a delicacy with which he treats the body of his most perfect primarch, divested of armour and pale of skin. beelzebub takes care not to hover, concerning himself with the matter of chaos they will bring upon the land. he stretches ligaments, runs careful hands over muscles, admiring what he has taken from and put into his own hands.

“hmph. you are sewing his head on the body,” beelzebub observes one evening when he has unwisely chosen to watch lucilius at work. he is a ridiculously patient man, though the way he peeks out from under his hood carries a hint of mockery; puzzlement; disgust. he pretends to understand, and exalted outsider he may be— he understands nothing.

lucilius’ work does not leave a single trace or scar. belial’s throat fits nicely at the space where lucifer was beheaded. that had, after all, been his very single intention. “and you are charting the course of pilot waves.”

the pithy insult is not lost on beelzebub. he scoffs, or perhaps he laughs. “i will not discount the brilliancy of your move. to invest in such a worthless fragment from millenias-war ago to ensure your greatest creation could become our ally.” another _ hmph_. “despite your outrage, this was one of your plans, was it not?”

“no, bubs,” belial answers, lips moving shallowly while his hollow eyes stare forward. he smiles, like lucilius’ ministrations tickle him. “nowhere in his wildest dreams did he have any plans to kill lucifer. you knew it had to happen and you still couldn’t come up with anything to stop it. have i got you right, cilius?”

“silence.”

belial chuckles. “i’ve spent too much time with you now not to know. but you made me so i’d always know,” he’s saying, but his voice is overlapping with beelzebub’s, who speaks over him like he doesn’t exist. and belial _ doesn’t_; not yet. the spinal column is yet to be attached. “— someone out there who would always know you, want you, remember you exist— say, did you design me with love in mind?”

“—a perverse interest in your own creations,” beelzebub cuts through. “that is what sets us apart from the others, you and i. i think; you dote. unfortunately, it seems you drizzled too much sentimentality into this one, and not enough in the other. was that your plan as well, lucilius?”

in answer to both, a voice that is unspoken, one that is, and the background humming of god in his head:

“an unintended consequence,” lucilius says, and nothing more. the final stitch; he lifts belial’s head, pushes with the flat of his palm to push the spine and brain stem into place.

beelzebub smiles. lucilius closes his eyes.

“our new world will have nothing but,” beelzebub says.

a hand with a pulse closes in his and lucilius breathes to the sound of the war drums.

* * *

now comes the end. now comes the quietus and the silence.

“say, cilius. do you ever wish you were still a virgin?”

“what are you talking about.”

“you know exactly what i mean. all those nights we spent together—”

“_researching_.”

“ow! —do you regret them? would you rather have been with lucifer, you think?”

“why does it concern you?”

“well, i am him now. your most perfect creation. i definitely liked how i was before, but if you’re going to keep undressing me with your eyes, there’s absolutely nothing for complaining. ow! yowch! give a guy a break!”

he holds his elbow above belial’s chest threateningly. belial, in turn, holds his hands out in a prayer for peace. when the second has turned, he is laying back down upon the fallen angel, his book perched on the man’s stomach. the pages ripple with laughter and he scowls again.

“what.”

“all this effort just to use me as a table,” belial chuckles, reaching out to brush some of lucilius’ bangs from his face. “weren’t we supposed to watch the end of the world together? isn’t that why you came all this way?”

“avatar is yet finished with the skydoms,” lucilius points out. beelzebub has taken the reigns on the front of destruction, and lucilius is fully content to let him be. there is no trust there, but a knowledge that beelzebub thirsts for little else.

“you woke me up, had me summon the thing without so much as a ‘hello,’ and now we’re in bed reading about the tetraelements.” belial looks up at the ceiling. he stretches lucifer’s hand out, like he still isn’t used to his new body yet. but that’s a lie. he had slipped into perfect skin like a snake. he had woken up with a blink of his eyes, a hand in lucilius’, and a whisper to calm the explosion of sound in lucilius’ ear. 

the hounds are quiet now. the primarchs and the spare are fighting a losing war with avatar. now and again he feels the gentle gravitational ripples of a new force, a new singularity, but there is nothing to worry about. his plans will hold true. lucifer is gone but,

“i’m here,” belial tells him. “after how many years? and you’re telling me there’s nothing you want to do with me?”

“i _ want _ you to be quiet,” lucilius snaps.

“i don’t think you do. you’ve had all this time to yourself.” belial has decided, it seems, that enough is enough. lucilius makes a dangerous sound in the back of his throat when belial lifts him, tosses his book away. he brings them together, tangles their legs, presses his head to his partner’s neck and breathes deep. “i think you missed me.”

“i felt nothing of the sort.”

“i think you love me.”

“your idiocy knows no bounds.”

belial’s laughing with a throat that doesn’t belong to him. lucilius is glaring at him with eyes that are a shadow of another’s. a creator is an artist and can pick apart his pieces as he sees fit, but they are both frankenstein's monsters, now, never quite meant to exist. god would not be pleased with either of them. let him feel the odium that has pulsed throughout their blood since the dawn of their time.

“how was mikey while i was gone? and sandy? they’re both pretty angry now…”

“you should be thanking lucifer for the sacrifice he made,” lucilius replies. “and groveling. you interfered with my plans. you are exactly the sort of moron who chooses to die when his master forbids it.”

“my deepest apologies, _ my master_. shall i lick your boot to make you feel better?”

“ugh.”

“haha. cilius, you asked for this.”

certainly, he did. he carried around a head for two thousand and some years and withstood the might of his own creations all to breathe life back into this man. lucifer should not have had to die for it— he was simply waiting for the chance to remake belial’s body. he was simply…

belial gives him a gentle shake to get him out of his thoughts. lucilius shoves a hand in his face. belial bites his fingers. “it’s okay to say you’re not good at improvising, you know. that’s what i’m here for. i got you covered.”

“...hmm. as long as you know you are the contingency plan and nothing more.”

“what else could i be? say the word and i’m it, baby.”

a monster of creation and his genius astral, set about to bring the world down. the room gives a foreboding shake, and belial draws him in tighter. he’s had enough of the silence and the veils laid over his mind. belial’s words are a fizz and bubble to drown in.

a warm palm at his temple, lips pressed to his forehead. contempt, disgust, revelery.

“i’m here for you,” belial-in-lucifer promises.

affection.

“i know.”

the maker will weep when he sees the state the world is in.

**Author's Note:**

> Tits out for Avatar


End file.
